Kent studio potter Jane Saffell makes curvaceous, wheel-thrown ceramics with striking surface designs, marketing her work as “Art you can use every day”. Working in stoneware, she creates tactile surfaces using glaze dots and veils in patterns that incorporate the burnished clay body.
Circles and spheres guide the curved form of Jane’s bowls, mugs, cups, bottles and vases and feature across their surfaces. Bioscience motifs and concepts from a previous professional life emerge, evoking cellular processes and behaviours. Inspired by 19th century potter Edwin Martin, Jane’s bottles and vases often take naturalistic forms evoking seed pods and gourds. Her limited, earthy glaze palette draws from the colours she grew up with in Kenya and Zambia.
With her intention to create ceramics for everyday use that are as pleasurable to handle as to look at, Jane is part of the continuum of potters through the ages and across the world who make beautiful, functional vessels.
Jane joined Design-Nation in 2026.
